President Donald Trump’s frequent social media sign-off, “Thank you for your attention to this matter”, has become as much a part of his trademark style as his make-up and hairdo. It’s more comic than sinister.

However, when Trump told Vice-President JD Vance on Truth Social to “focus his complete and total attention” on investigating alleged fraud in Democratic cities rather than waste his time on a deal with Iran, concluding it with TYFYATTM was a way of telling him to shut up about Iran or face his wrath.

This order to stay in his lane puts Vance in a lose-lose situation. The Memorandum of Understanding he negotiated with Iran in June is dead. He has been stripped of any further peace-brokering role. If Trump says, “Don’t mention the war,” Vance can’t even voice his opinion on it as part of his delicate bid for the 2028 nomination, but has to leave it to surrogates to make the case for him.

As for investigating corruption in Democrat-run cities, that’s about as desirable a task as the one former President Joe Biden gave his vice-president Kamala Harris on immigration. If you remember, the luckless Harris was supposed to address the “root causes” of immigration when the primary one was Biden’s own border policies.

Good luck, Vance, persuading voters to “look over there” at evidence of welfare fraud in Minneapolis, when Congress will start poring over alleged crimes and misdemeanours by the Trump family and their allies as soon as the new blue wave of lawmakers take their seats in January. He will need all the skills of a magician to pull that one off.

“Donald Trump and JD Vance are attempting to gaslight and distract the American people from noticing the rampant corruption happening right under their noses at the White House,” Kendall Whitmer said on behalf of the Democratic National Committee. “Trump, his kids, and his administration have made billions off their access to the White House.”

Now that Vance has been muzzled, I wonder whether we will ever see him again at the podium in the role of surrogate White House press secretary, since Trump obviously doesn’t trust him to deliver the right message. This is despite the fact that the President remains sorely in need of a replacement for his favourite sparrer with the media, Karoline Leavitt. After some comedy knockabout, it turned out that Trump’s great mate, UFC chief Dana White, wouldn’t touch her job with a bargepole.

However, the behind-the-scenes spinning wars have begun in earnest over whether Vance or Secretary of State Marco Rubio will be the preferred 2028 candidate from within the Trump administration. Let’s just say it’s remarkable how quickly Rubio emerged in the as the hero of the Nvidia sex-and-spy scandal, having reportedly briefed the President back in May about Jensen Huang’s alleged misdeeds. (Trump has said, “No, I didn’t hear about it then.”)

By the same token, the has just revealed that the clean-cut Rubio spent $1.2 million of taxpayers’ money on military jet flights to watch his son play American football for his college team in Florida, despite his son being a “walk-on” who mostly stays on the bench (the Secretary of State is required to travel by government plane). The university stadium, the paper reported, is known as “The Swamp”. The timing feels significant.

Vance’s friends and rivals have also been busy. Thus a report on CNN this week claimed that the Vice-President was giving “serious consideration to not running for President in 2028” at virtually the same time as reported “Vance sees an opening in the post-election blame game.”

Andrew Kolvet, executive producer of podcast, claimed Vance’s opposition to the Iran war would work in his favour. “I think JD warmly welcomes that fight, because he not only has the moral high ground but also the wildly more popular position,” he said. An anonymous friend added, “JD’s critics are doing the job for him.”

Neither Vance nor Rubio have confirmed they will run. Rubio has remained especially tight-lipped. “I literally will not talk about 2028 anymore. I just won’t do it,” he recently said.

This reflects less on both men’s ultimate ambition than on the parlous position of their boss. Trump has been all over the place, policy-wise, since the Republicans lost their shirts in the midterm elections. For the first time, on issues such as immigration and Iran, he appears uncertain how to undo the damage without losing his base. Familiar hints that the election might have been rigged have been met with derision. Megyn Kelly, the conservative podcaster, posted: “Just stop.”

In short, Vance can’t talk, Rubio won’t, and Trump doesn’t know what to say.